Interview: Sally Seltmann (Sydney via LA) talks moving to America, her new album and more.

Sally Seltmann is a busy lady. After her touring with Seeker Lover Keeper (her collaboration with Sarah Blasko and Holly Throsby) she has found herself travelling and basing herself in a new country, but also writing consistently – both in a musical sense and a an actual, writerly, sense. Here she speaks to Philippe Perez on all that has been happening in her world prior to the release of her newest album Hey Daydreamer.

Hey Daydreamer has some interesting instrumentation. To me, listening to the album I hear it has an orchestral aspect to it. From what I remember from your previous album Hearts That Pounding consisted of some simple piano and voice for a few songs. For this album there was a consistent melding of instruments together. Why did you go down this path?

Part of that is just to do with choices that I made in the production. I produced Heart That’s Pounding with Francois Tetaz but with this album I produced it with my husband Darren Seltmann, and we just got into layering a lot of things naturally on top of each other in the studio. I am a big fan of music that has lots of different interesting layers. That’s just how the album turned out.

Did you discover new instruments in the process of making this album?

It was Darren’s idea to get some pedal steel guitar on some of the songs. It surprised me, but I really loved hearing that on some songs. We also got a bit of harp and saxophones plus a lot of programs with synths. We also had songs that had multiple drum tracks, so there will be Darren playing drums and Bree (Van Ryk) did a drum track and then I would so some percussion on top which were melded together. That was an interesting experiment.

Was there any particular instrument that was an unusual or difficult experience? Did you have to learn new instruments?

No. We basically got people to play saxophone, flute and clarinet. I did a lot of the organ and played bass on a lot of songs, plus percussion and piano and guitar too. Then I sampled in a lot of songs as well too. Was really a normal experience really.

Between Heart That’s Pounding and this album you undertook Seeker Lover Keeper, a collaboration with Holly Throsby and Sarah Blasko. Did the time with both of them changed the way you thought about writing songs?

Yeah, they probably did subconsciously. Whenever you are collaborating with other people, you can’t help but be influenced by them. I don’t know, I really just felt though after all the touring with Seeker Lover Keeper I felt so busy that the songs for Hey Daydreamer just came out so naturally and quickly.

It was really an album where I wanted to express a lot of emotion, and those songs just came out when I thought about it amongst the busy time.

How does your busyness make songs come out naturally? What do you mean by that?

I think I just naturally think and feel a lot for the average person. It’s just how I experience life and I won’t go through many stages as a songwriter where I don’t really feel like ‘there’s nothing much I can write a song about’. If I wasn’t writing songs, I’d be writing poetry which I do every day anyway. Or I’d also be writing a book or I’d be writing a screenplay. I just feel like I have a lot that I would like to express.

Obviously you don’t like to be bored. You always like to be active and doing something all the time.

Yes and no. I do like to do new and different things, but I also am introverted and that’s probably why I don’t do lots of things and experience it. I do lots of things but I process it and then I write about it. It then turns into something that other people can enjoy and listen to. I like doing things in that way.

You mentioned that you write poetry and screenplays. I find that there is a certain story aspect that can be associated with your music. You always have deeply rooted stories that have to do with particular people or relationships. It seems to be a running theme with the majority of your songs across a lot of your solo albums. How do you find these stories or how do you come up with them?

Through different ways. A lot of the time it would be a conversation with a friend and they’ll just say something and it will trigger a spark in my mind. A song can be born from as something as simple as that. Other times I would be reading a book and something will come to mind too. I don’t know, I just experience being in the world. That how I go about it.

A lot of people that do what I do have 50 million boyfriends and I’m happily married to my husband. So writing this album has made me interested in other artists and songwriters who have long term relationships. I think that’s why I wrote ‘Billy’ and ‘I Will Not Wear Your Wedding Ring’ (which is) a song about a dream. I feel that is my way of writing about relationships. Whereas other people would just get a new partner and write all these songs about them, or the break up and all that sort of thing.

But I felt like, for me, exploring (songwriting) through a character is for me. I’m at a point where I find writing songs that way is really engaging and fascinating.

You sound like a lover of literature too.

Yeah I do like reading! I’m reading a great book called The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch that someone gave to me. That’s a really cool book about a man who is in the theatre scene in London who goes and lives in a little house by himself on the edge of a cliff.

I also recently moved over to Los Angeles and I recently bought as soon as I got here I bought a Marilyn Monroe biography. I’m reading that because she lived here and had a very interesting, crazy life. I am also reading a book called The Circle by Dave Eggers. His book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is really good but I’m finding it hard to get into this new book. I think I might be in the wrong place or something. You know when you know the book is really good but you just can’t into it at that moment in your life.

I found it interesting that there is a theme of love in your music. There is a lot of the music being made that focuses around it obviously, but there is something different in how you explore the different aspects of love. I sometimes wonder if writing about love in music can ever get tiresome. What are your thoughts about that?

I do have some songs that aren’t identified as love songs, but I think I’m just naturally drawn to love, human nature and the way that humans interact with each other. So that, to me just feels like a natural thing that comes out to me when I write.

I guess the fun in being a songwriting is that you can set yourself challenges for writing a song that’s got nothing to do with love!

You recorded in an attic studio space in Sydney and a bungalow in LA. Could you explain what the experience was like not recording in a normal studio space?

So we did most of the recording at home in our attic and a bit in our lounge room. We actually did do only a few days in a proper studio where we got some session players where it was little too hard to get into our house.

I did two New Buffalo albums where I recorded them at home. It’s kind of, in a way, you feel like you can really create this thing that’s sort of in its own world. It’s not really you can do things by the book on how things should sound properly. You have more time and you can really feel like yourself. I hope it means that you can be really unique as well because you’re not pretending or trying too hard. I’m not sure if that makes sense…

I suppose another thing I want to ask about like about is place. Being in your own space, you were relaxed. So in a studio, do you get anxious?

I think, the good thing about working in a studio space is that you go there and you do your work, get really concentrated and focussed and then you can go home and don’t think about it all that much. Whereas when you do work at home, it’s really difficult to separate work and home life. You are always thinking about work at home. About the songs that you’re making and for some reason it’s just distracting.

But it is good at times! Recording at home can actually work for you and against you, but it felt like the right way for us to make Hey Daydreamer because my daughter is only five and I felt like I had been doing so much touring and so much work when she was really young and I just wanted to be around her more, so it felt like the best way for that to happen was for me to record from home.

Did your daughter witness you recording the album?

Yeah, yeah, she heard all the songs over and over! She actually played on some of the songs as well. She played percussion. It’s really funny though because she is not that into me playing my songs when she is around, because she kind of wants to be the centre of attention! (laughs)

That’s just something we’ve noticed around here. Whether that is good or bad I don’t know.

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Sally Seltmann‘s new album Hey Daydreamer is out on the 28th February through Caroline. She’s also announced am Australian tour, with the dates below:

Sally Seltmann – ‘Hey Daydreamer’ Tour Dates
with special guests Wintercoats

Thursday April 3 – Lizottes, Kincumber
Tickets available from the venue online: www.lizottes.com.au

Friday April 4 – The Vanguard, Sydney
Tickets available from the venue online: www.thevanguard.com.au

Saturday April 5 – The Clarendon Hotel, Katoomba
Tickets available from the venue online: www.clarendonguesthouse.com.au

Thursday April 10 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane
Tickets available from OzTix online: www.OzTix.com.au and OzTix retail outlets

Friday April 11 – Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh, Melbourne
Tickets available from the venue online: www.caravanmusic.com.au

Sunday April 13 – Kelvin Club, Melbourne
Tickets available from the venue online: www.kelvinclub.com

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